Typical Antimasonic Accusations

Some antimasonic elements post the same old tired lies and innuendos over and over again, as if by repetition they would suddenly become true, or,
perhaps, in the hope that by repetition they would sneak by refutation. In the hopes of addressing some of the trolls, I am reposting this article,
which was originally created to address the tripe posted by one Henry Makow, a "man" who hates women, organized religion, secret societies and
masons...

The article (Does A Satanic Cult Rule The World?) states that "The "Maryland Sniper" is on everyone's mind," and then by innuendo, attempts to
tie the illuminati (who have not existed since the late 1700's) to the sniper, which is particularly amusing since the sniper was caught a few days
later and found to be a pathetic loser, an ex soldier, a Muslim and is not a Mason.

The article then goes on to cite the "importance" of the number 13, since it: " .[is a] number [that] signifies their (Masons) scorn and hatred for
Christianity." This is an interesting assertion, since nowhere in Masonic Ritual is the number 13 used, nor is it used in lodges, nor is it
represented in lodges. The number 13 has no significance to Masons. How can anything that begins with such egregious misinformation and misstatement
of fact be taken seriously?

Another interesting claim made in the article is that: " . a "terrorist" started the First World War by killing the heir (Franz Ferdinand) to the
Austrian throne. The terrorist was a Freemason." The reason that this claim is interesting is that history records the name of the terrorist, he was
a young man named Gavrilo Princip -- one of seven young Bosnians that the Black Hand recruited. This is a historic fact, what is also a historic fact,
is that Gavrilo Princip was not a Mason. This is the third claim made in the article that is patently false and easily verifible. A trend is beginning
to appear.

The next absurd claim is that: "Most wars are engineered by the Illuminati to weaken civilization and create a global police state, the "New World
Order." So, lets see, World War I was started over the growing German hegemony in Europe, France's fears, Russia's fears, Austria's slow
dissolution and Italy's desire for power.

World War II started because the Treaty of Versailles imposed such draconian punishment on Germany that it paupered the country and did not address
the underlying nationalism. Hitler, using the Jews and communists as an excuse, played on the pride of the Germans to essentially rekindle World War
I. The Koren War was fought to "prevent the spread of communism", as was Vietnam.

None but the most die hard rods-are-real/the-CIA-Killed-Kennedy conspiracy cultists could believe that the Illuminati were behind these conflicts!
There is no evidence for this assertion, and truth be told, the world overall is a better place now and there is ample evidence that the Illuminati no
longer even exist. The United Nations, while for the most part a waste of money, gives nations a place to gather and work out their differences, and
Germany is gone as a world power. No Illuminati here.

The rhetorical question is asked as to who the Illuminati are, and never answers the question, instead swerving off into a diatribe against those of
the Jewish faith. Research reveals into the whys, wherefores and whos of the Illuminati reveal a lot! For instance, at:
www.english.upenn.edu... the following information, representative of that available in any well stocked
library, is found":

The Order of the Illuminati, a secret society whose name means "Enlightened Ones," was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), a
former Jesuit and professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt.

Specific knowledge about the society is scarce. The Order of the Illuminati was established with some unspecified ties to the Masonic lodges of
Germany; as a secret society within a secret society, the Illuminati have produced at least as many myths as verifiable facts. The sympathies and
beliefs of Weishaupt himself, for instance, have been claimed by countless groups -- atheists, Cabalists, rationalists, democrats, socialists,
anarchists. Some trace the Illuminati back to the Knights Templar, to Gnostic cults, to ancient Egypt, and even to Atlantis. In the 1790s, some
credited (or blamed) the society with manipulating the American and French Revolutions. In the United States, Federalists encouraged people to believe
Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republican Party were controlled by the Illuminati in Europe.

It is not strictly necessary to disentangle fact from fiction, since the influence of the Order was greater in legend than in fact. But several things
can be stated about the Illuminati with some degree of certainty. The two central figures in the organization were Weishaupt and Adolph Franz
Friedrich Ludwid Baron Von Knigge. The members of the Illuminati are known to have favored free-thinking and radical politics, and were often alleged
to have ties with Jacobins (Weishaupt and the Illuminati are discussed in Abbé Barruel's History of Jacobinism, which Mary Shelley is known to have
read in October 1814). The Order promoted a belief in deism and a doctrine of spiritual perfection: the society was in fact first known as the Order
of Perfectibilists.

At their height, the Illuminati claimed over two thousand members, not only in Germany but in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland,
Hungary, and Italy, including Goethe, Herder, and many other prominent nobles and reformers. But the Bavarian government cracked down on the
Illuminati and other secret societies in 1784 for allegedly plotting a massive overthrow of Europe's monarchies, although it was unable to squelch
them entirely. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the Illuminati had effectively disbanded, although legends of their continued
existence(and influence) persist into the twentieth century (among, for instance, members of the John Birch Society). Perhaps some of this confusion
is owing to the fact that over time, the word illuminati came to be used more expansively for many enthusiasts of Enlightenment, including the
followers of Emmanuel Swedenborg.

The article goes on to discuss a character named Svali. This is a completely fictional persona, and has been discredited too many times to even bother
doing more than point it out and just ANOTHER example of incorrect facts. This makes five for five deliberately misstated "facts". But it continues
with a diatribe against Jews, in the form of the Pharisees, where the claim is made that the Pharisees practiced: ". a naturalistic religion that
turned Christ's message on its head."

This is an interesting claim, since the Pharisees predated Christ's advent. The article then further states that the teachings of the Pharisees was
that: "Man is God, rules the universe, and defines reality. We can indulge our desires." So far, the article is now six for six in falsehoods and
misstatements. Here is the truth about what the Pharisee's believed:

The Pharisees "...tended to be middle class and open to religious innovation. In the interpretation of the law the Pharisees differed from the
Sadducees in their use of oral legal tradition to supplement the Torah, although their interpretations, once given, were scrupulously adhered to.
Pharisaic emphasis on divine providence led to a marked fatalism, and they adopted a belief in resurrection and an elaborate angelology. All this was
rejected by the Sadducees.

In the New Testament the Pharisees appear as Jesus' most vocal critics. Their insistence on ritual observance of the letter rather than the spirit of
the law evoked strong denunciation by Jesus; he called them "whitewashed tombs" (Matt. 23:27) and self-righteous lovers of display (Matt. 6:1-6,
16-18). The Pharisees are portrayed as plotting to destroy Jesus (Matt. 12:14), although they do not figure in the accounts of his arrest and trial.
Despite Jesus' attacks on the Pharisees--which were possibly on unrepresentative members of the sect--he shared many beliefs with them, including the
resurrection of the dead.

The Pharisees held the Jews together after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. The sect continued into the 2d century, working on the redaction of
the Talmud and looking for the restoration of Israel through divine intervention. Pharisees, quoted from: Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1998
ed.

This is reported in the Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia and other reference works. As can therefore be determined, the Pharisees were not some
"nature loving naturalist sect," which denigrates them and their faith, but rather, a group that lived by a strict interpretation of ritual
observance within the Jewish faith. The true intent of this sub section is anti-Semitic, and serves no purpose in the overall article except to serve
as a platform for the utterance of anti-Semitic propaganda. The article then goes on to claim that: "Dating back to Zoroastrianism, the Jewish Cabala
reverses the roles of God and Lucifer and embraces occult symbols, rituals and blood sacrifices." The real inference here is that Judaism is Satanic,
which is an interesting claim, seeing as Jesus WAS Jewish, and a son of the line of David, the kings of Israel.

If that were the end, an assumption could be made of ignorance, but it even goes further by claiming that "...the Cabalists secretly dedicated
themselves to destroying Christianity and Western civilization. In 1773 Amschel Mayer Rothschild convened a meeting of 12 prominent Jewish bankers and
other prominent Jewish personalities and submitted a program to level the social order using the contradictory promise of "liberty" and
"equality."

This is an interesting assertion, that Amchel Mayer Rothschild called any kind of meeting in 1773, since according to the family history and birth
records, Amshel Mayer Rothschild was BORN in June of 1773. It is unlikely that Amshel Mayer Rothschild was doing anything more sinister than sucking
at his mother's breast that year! Facts are important, they can't just be made up on the fly and expected to stand unchallenged.

So far, every "fact" claimed or asserted in the article is false or made up, as a simple examination of the facts has shown. However, it gets worse,
for then the article goes on to quote from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document that has been thoroughly debunked as being a document
created by the Czar in the early 1900s.

The Protocols purport to show that:

The Illuminati was behind the revolutionary movements of the 18th -- 20th Century . The [Jewish] bankers used their power to spread their Satanic
convictions. . They {the Jews] had finagled a monopoly on credit (usurping the government's right to create money)

Yet history and research by honorable men, dedicated to uncovering the truth show these documents to be fakes. How can anyone quote from a document
that is a fraud?

How then are we to react when the article goes on to make the patently false claim that Freemasonry is [a] Cabala and, in the words of Andre
Krylienko, (The Red Thread) it was "launched for the purpose of enlisting non-Jews consciously or unconsciously in the service of Jewry." (p.93).
Well, that will come as a surprise to Masons, since Masonic tradition informs us that Freemasonry has existed since before the time of Christ and the
Egyptians.

The article even puts forth the claim that: "Israel is supposed to become the capital and religious seat of the new Masonic world government." So
which is it? Masons are the puppets of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy or Masons are the worldwide conspiracy? How about neither? The president of the
United States, William Jefferso Clinton couldn't keep it secret that he was getting blow jobs in the Oval Office of the Whitehouse, yet no proof has
ever been found that shows this global conspiracy exists. But don't let making the claim stop anyone from making up facts to suit their
prejudices.

The article then goes on to rant about Masonic symbols on the dollar bill as "proof" of a global conspiracy. Lets look at the facts about the dollar
bill: In its current incarnation, the bill was designed in the 1950's, and included many traditional symbols. The pyramid, an Egyptian symbol, was a
popular motif in the 1950s, and was chosen and displayed unfinished, because the great work of building the country is not yet done.

The triangle is the capstone of the pyramid, and is shown being lowered by God (this used to be possible before the atheists used the liberal courts
to strike down God), and the All Seeing Eye is the Eye of God, over all our works. Despite the claims by Dr. Makow, who has apparently never taken
Latin class as a part of his English Literature degree, Novo Ordo Seclorum means: A new order of the ages, not New Secular Order, though I can see
where some might get confused, GUESSING at the translation.

The claim is even made that Freemasons have been an "... omnipresent international government operating treasonably from within the United States."
and then goes on claim that: "Freemasonry is being introduced as the New World Religion."

The exact opposite is true, and for several reasons. The first is that Masonry is not a religion, any more than Boy Scouts, The Promise Keepers or The
Lion's Club, the Odd Fellows or the Elks Club is a religion. Masonry takes good men, who want to be better men, men who profess a belief in God, and
through allegorical lessons, inculcates moral teachings, illustrated by symbols. Christ taught using allegorical tales, illustrated by symbols.
Masonry demands that her sons practice those virtues that are instilled in all men: Faith. Hope, Charity, Truth, Honor, Integrity.

Most Masons are Christian, as this country is mostly Christian, and claims that Masons worship the devil by any name shows a lack of any kind of real
idea of what Masonry is about. Masonry does not ask its sons to: ".swear blind obedience on pain of death before they even know what it represents."
Blind obedience is never asked of any man. Neither is Masonry a secret society, for all lodges are listed in the phone book around the country, and
Masons proudly wear and display their affiliation with the fraternity with the Square and Compass.

Masons serve the government and society in all capacities in all levels, from the trashmen in the street, to lawyers and judges in the courts, they
are your funeral directors, your priests, your chaplains, your policemen, and yes, some are even politicians. This is not proof that Masonry is
secretly running the world, but rather proof that Masonry attracts GOOD MEN, and makes good men better men. Masonry teaches that a man must give back
to the community, and some do that in service to the country.

The article then misquotes Albert Pike by claiming that "Masonry [sic] practices deception. It reserves its truths for the adept; the initiate is
"intentionally mislead by false interpretations." What Albert Pike wrote was not referring to Masonry at all, but to the practices of a group within
the Knights Templar, in the 1300's, not Masons at all.

In the whole article, there is one true statement, but even that is concealed with a deliberate falsehood. It claims that "Masonry [sic] preaches
"tolerance"." (which is true, harmony being essential to all societies, but especially to ours) but then adds in the lie stating that: Masonry
teaches that all religions are equal in order to negate all religions. This is false, and ridiculous on its face. Masonry teaches the Christly
acceptance of all men, regardless of their faith, not that all are the same or equal. In fact, Masonry does not teach religious dogma at all, and
encourages her sons to attend their churches, synagogues and Mosques, for Masonry is not a replacement for our obligations to God.

Most Masons are practicing Christians, or one faith or another, so the claim that: ".Christianity is especially abjured." is ridiculous. To support
these inane contentions, the article quotes Gary Kah, who has been completely discredited, not by Masons but by true researchers and educated men.

The claim is also made that Freemasonry is taught to your child. The "support" offered for this claim is that 75% of the schools in a city no longer
use the word "Christmas" to describe their holiday season festivities. Instead Christmas has been replaced with such jargon as "winter concerts"
and "international celebration of holidays."

While it is true that political correctness is eliminating Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Chanukah, etc., from our schools, our public places and our
places of business, this is not due to the influence of Masons. Rather, it is due to stupid atheists like Madeline Murray O'Hare and that clown who
filed suit against the pledge of allegiance in California.

Atheists don't want religious holidays mentioned at all, Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses don't want Christmas mentioned, good Catholics and
Baptists don't want Halloween mentioned. Masons have nothing to do with any of this. In fact, Masonry as a whole takes no stand on
political/religious events. Individual Masons are free to take any stand and believe anything they want, as long as they do not try to speak as a
Mason on any subject.

Since we live in a secular world, the article goes on to claim that society is at an impasse, and that thus we are ruled by Satan. As a Mason, and not
speaking for all Masons but only for myself, as no man speaks for all of Masonry, I would argue that the secular government we have is a good
thing.

No one wants to be told what religion to practice, how to believe, or when and how to worship. The freedom to choose is essential to the freewill that
God granted us as His children. He wants us to chose Him, to honor Him of our own free will and accord. Free will is not Satanic, quite the opposite,
for when you chose God, you abjure Satan.

This article does not prove Satanism, it does prove that before writing on a subject, proper research should be done, and that facts cannot be made up
on the fly to support personal prejudices. Quoting discredited, fabricated and false information does no service to anyone, not to the author, not to
his cause, and certainly not to God.

R. Theron Dunn is a member of Evergreen Lodge #635 in Riverside, Ca where he serves in the capacity of Junior Warden and can be reached via email at:
therondunn@excite.com.

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